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But a coterie of close friends who were in constant contact with Dorris in recent months saw a different side of the man--and cannot believe he was a child abuser. According to Douglas Foster, director of school affairs for the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley, Dorris was a "relatively cheerful, even-keeled, generous, outgoing person," whose anguish stemmed directly from recent events--the end of his marriage and the sex-abuse allegations. "Michael saw taking his own life as a rational way out," said Jeanne Friedman, a fund raiser in Berkeley who was close to Dorris for 26 years. "He felt that the charges would destroy his family, would destroy the body of work he had built up over his lifetime. He kept saying, 'All across the country, my books are in schools with young people. What do you think they're going to do when they hear about these charges?'"
The child-abuse allegations were reportedly made last December, after one of the couple's three biological daughters--Persia, 13, Pallas, 12, and Aza, 8--told her mother of abuse. Erdrich reported this to a health-care professional, who was obliged by law to tell police. Although such charges have become an increasingly frequent ploy in custody battles, Erdrich denied last week that she and Dorris were fighting over custody. With Dorris' death, the case is closed, and Erdrich's lawyers have filed a motion to keep the files sealed.
Dorris had made an earlier suicide attempt on Good Friday, ingesting pills and alcohol at a cottage on the farm he and Erdrich used to share in Cornish, New Hampshire. At that moment, his friend Foster called. During the conversation, Dorris said he had "activated the kit," and he then passed out. Foster alerted state police, who broke in and saved Dorris' life. After that, the author checked into a psychiatric facility. For a brief while, his friend Coughlin, who spoke to him many times a day, felt hopeful that Dorris was on the mend. He even talked excitedly about a new children's book he had started to write. Then on Thursday, April 10, he left the facility on a pass. He rented a car and registered at a motel under a false name and address. His body was discovered by police after the facility registered a missing person's report.
News of the suicide was a shock to the wide network of people Dorris and Erdrich had helped and writers whose work they encouraged. The couple met at Dartmouth, where Dorris, part Modoc Indian, had founded the Native American studies program, and Erdrich, also part Native American, was a student and later a writer-in-residence. While Erdrich won praise for her fiction, Dorris' most recognized achievement was his 1989 nonfiction book The Broken Cord. In it Dorris describes how, at age 26, he adopted a three-year-old Sioux boy, becoming one of the first single men in America to legally adopt a child. The child, Abel, had a constellation of mental and physical disabilities caused by the fact that his mother drank heavily during her pregnancy. Part memoir, part medical investigation into fetal-alcohol syndrome, especially among Native Americans, The Broken Cord was a best seller and became a 1992 made-for-TV movie. It also sparked congressional hearings into the syndrome and brought awareness of the dangers of drinking during pregnancy to a mass audience.